Howl of a Run

Part of what makes me a Cidiot is my uncomfortable relationship with nature. To me the wilderness is a place to visit, to spend a week or two marveling at its sights and beauty and then head back home. In my mind it's sort of Disney World without the 75 dollar price of admittance and of course when I run into a mouse I don't try to get a picture of me hugging it. Magic Kingdom is a nice idea, but you don't move in. The same goes for the country in my mind.

But still something made me think I needed to get in touch with another side of myself. To embrace the small town atmosphere, maybe wake up early on Saturday's and help a local farmer till his fields.

Now I don't quite know what tilling is, but I imagined it'd be back breaking yet leave me feeling rewarded once the harvest was done. In this scenario I also seemed to have magical abs that glistened in the sort of sunlight only Hollywood could light, the farmer's daughters watching from the comfort of a local porch.

And so I went east to Belleville, Ontario when it came time for me to go to college. During my years there I never once did anything productive on a farmers field, unless partying and shortcuts count. The only agricultural crops I grew were mold, and that was a most unfortunate bumper crop.

My brushes with nature were also short lived. Convinced I'd run into a crazed moose or something on the path between my dorm and the college I rarely ventured far.

Then one night my fears seemed to come true.

I like to call it a tale of near death if you will.

I was walking through the forest-y portion of the path late at night as I headed back to place. Out of the corner of my eye I noticed something coming through the trees. At first I passed it off as just a dog and continued on my way. Then I began to think about how strange it was that there would be a dog. In all my time on campus I had never seen a dog, they weren’t allowed, why in the middle of the night would one randomly be walking in the woods?

Slowly turning to look at the thing from the woods again it hit me how much it looked like a wolf, in fact it looked identical to a wolf. I started to walk faster, and as I did the thing started coming at me, every time I went a little faster it went faster.

My mind swarmed with thoughts. Was this how it ends for me? Killed by a wolf?

As it got closer tomorrow’s headlines ran through my head:

“Little Red Robertson’s Corpse,” “An American Werewolf in Belleville” or my personal favourite, “The Boy Who Didn’t Cry Wolf… Because it Ripped His Vocal Cords Out.”

I took off running and it did too.

As I braced for the end a campus security guard came out from the woods.

It's funny, one minute you're fearing for your life, the next your trying to explain very rationally to campus security that the reason you were running away from the drug sniffing dog was you thought it was a wolf trying to kill you.

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